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<p>To 99% of the people in the world, there is no difference between “physics” and “applied mechanics.” Similarly, someone getting a Nobel Prize for work they do as an applied mechanician would be getting the Nobel Prize in Physics. So let’s think, who are some well-known mechanicians: Euler, Galilei, Hertz, Lagrange, Laplace, Navier, Stokes, Prandtl, Newton and plenty more.</p>
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<p>What do you mean by “prestigious”? For all intents and purposes, mechanicians are physicists. Is mechanics not a branch of physics? Just because it is more than a century old (as opposed to, say, quantum mechanics or general relativity) doesn’t mean it is somehow no longer qualified as one of the fundamental branches of physics. Technically speaking, quantum mechanics is a subfield of mechanics, so if you really want to get technical, anyone who works in quantum mechanics is a mechanician.</p>